


Darkest Before the Dawn

by Squid_Ink



Series: The Eagle and the Cross [5]
Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Connor as a dad, Connorline children, Connorline progeny, Gen, I like this one, OC centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-28
Updated: 2016-01-28
Packaged: 2018-05-16 18:28:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5836180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squid_Ink/pseuds/Squid_Ink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Edwin Kenway, the teenage son of Connor and Aveline, thinks about what it means to be an Assassin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Darkest Before the Dawn

_Homestead, United States of America, 1800_ _—_ _Winter_

Snow drifted down lazily through the branches of the leafless trees. There was a bird call in the distance and the chattering of a squirrel, besides those and the sound of his own breathing the winterized forest was silent as a grave. Edwin Kenway crouched in a tree, scanning the landscape, looking for any sign of unusual movement.

He sighed, breath coming out in smoky white puffs. He hated this exercise, yet his parents insisted upon it. "To be a good assassin you must blend into your environment. There yet not there," his father would say. "Be someone that is so commonly seen that they forget you the moment they look away," his mother would say.

Edwin had accepted the lessons gracefully alongside his sister, honing skills that made both of them silently, deadly and efficient killers. He was sixteen, well will be come summer. He didn't see why he had to do these drills. He had already earned his hidden blades and his assassin robes. What was the point of doing this?

Edwin stood, stretched before jumping to another branch, then another, silently moving through the trees has his parents had taught him. The cold snow that clung to craggily tree bark numbed his fingertips, but he had already spotted his target in the distance; a man by the shape of him, silently moving through the snow in dark clothing, and if Edwin had to guess, a seasoned hunter. Edwin jumped up to a higher branch, and crouched, loosely holding the branch. He looked down at the man allowed his senses to expand, a golden tinge aura slowly appear around the man's silhouette. Edwin smirked. Target confirmed.

He withdrew from his senses, the golden glow vanishing as the lack of the forest sounds rushed loudly into his ears. Calmly, he stalked his prey from his perch in the trees, moving from branch to branch, until his target stopped, looking around. Edwin noted that his target also wore the white robes of an assassin. _Getting dull, Father,_ Edwin thought with something akin to cocky teenage amusement. He pushed down his hood, before leaping from the branch.

He fell with a nearly soundless ruffle of fabric, and tackled his target, grabbing his shoulders and throwing him to the snow. He pressed his right wrist up against the man's neck, eyes locked and he whispered, "Dead."

"No, you are," Connor replied coolly, his own wrist against his son's chest, right above the heart. "You got cocky, again." He pushed his son off him.

"I would have killed you," Edwin whined sitting in the snow. He flicked some away from his knee. Connor snorted, as he got to his feet. Edwin didn't miss how his father's hand went to his side, pressing against the old battle scar he received during the Revolution. His father never talked much about the Revolution, and Edwin didn't ask much about it anyway. The only thing his father had ever said about it was that it was tragically hollow.

"You are still too slow to strike. For an effective aerial kill you must kill your target as you land on them, not wait until you have them on the ground," Connor said as he walked over his son and offering the boy a hand. Edwin glared at it for a few moments before he accepted his father's hand. Edwin got to his feet with his father's help. "Plus, I saw you just as you leapt," Connor added.

"Is everything I do wrong?" Edwin huffed in frustration before blowing on his fingers to keep them warm. "I'm better than Zéphyrine," Edwin added. He ran a hand through his black hair, undoing the leather thong at his nape before gathering the loose locks and retying them.

"Zéphyrine is Zéphyrine," Connor said, "and she has her own skills to work on, her own weaknesses to improve on."

"Is that suppose to make me feel better?" Edwin grumbled.

"No, it is supposed to make you think. You hesitated in your kill, that can mean the difference between victory and defeat."

"I knew it was you, I would've struck to kill if it was a stranger," Edwin said, feeling defensive and trying to justify his actions. Of course, he hesitated; he attacked his father. Drill or not, he could never strike to kill his father. The sound of the slap echoed loudly in the winter landscape, and Edwin's shocked intake of breathe shattered it further.

"Sometimes," Connor said slowly, eyes growing icy and hard, "you must kill kin."

"Father," Edwin whispered, rubbing his cheek. He wondered what that was about, but with that look on his father's face, Edwin held his tongue. Edwin knew it was one of those subjects Connor refused to talk about and just waved in a dismissive manner and mutter, "read the journals."

Edwin looked down at the snow, and rubbed his cheek again. "I'll strike to kill next time, sir," he replied curtly. His father grunted his acknowledgement. "Is that all for today?"

"No," Connor said, "there's another reason why we're out here."

"Oh? What is it? Is it Templars? Do I finally get to kill one?" Edwin asked, his mood brightening. He hated the Templars, though the Templar Order had been struggling to regain its strength in North America since his parents had put an end to the schemes, every now and then one or two popped up, but they were swiftly snuffed out.

"Pull your hood up," Connor groused, grabbing the beak-like tip of his son's hood and tugging it over the boy's head.

"Father, we're on the Homestead, our land," Edwin said, stepping away, but the action was complete, his hood in place and beak-like tip making it slightly difficult to see. "We're safe."

"I do not think so; I have seen strangers on this land. Men I do not recognize nor trust, we are to investigate."

"Templars finally found us," Edwin hissed, he thought he felt the bracers on his wrists burn slightly. The hidden blades he wore once belonged to Haytham Kenway, his paternal grandfather and a Templar. On the upper inside of each bracer was the impression of the Templar Cross.

"Not every enemy is a Templar, son," Connor replied as he began to trek through the snow to a tree. He scaled the tree effortlessly, but as Edwin watched his father, he noticed how Connor favored his right side, where the old injury was located. His father didn't have the feline grace he once had, age caught up to them all eventually. Edwin gave a rueful snort before following his father into the trees.

* * *

Father and son zipped through the trees until they reached the pass between the ridge that protected the bay from the interior. "There," Connor said, pointing to the few campfires. "Those are the strangers."

"Are they Americans?" Edwin asked, since they clearly didn't look Native from this distance and he could hear a few words of English drifting up.

"Possibly," Connor replied.

"Bet they are Templar," Edwin muttered and flicked his wrist, his hidden blade making a soft snick. He bunched up, ready to spring when his father put a hand on his shoulder, stopping them.

"Patience," he whispered.

"Even if they aren't Templar we should kill them. This is our land! The people that live on this land, we protect! Isn't that our duty?"

"Are duty," Connor said, "is to protect humanity from the shackles of control. Nothing is true, everything is permitted. I have told you that before, son."

"But Father—"

"Enough, Edwin!" Connor snapped. "You skew my teachings. Do not mistake me when I say that the Templars must be destroyed as if they are evil. No, it is their ideology that I disagree with it. Yet, you cannot kill an ideology, only the men that preach it."

"Father, you misunderstand—"

"When did I put such a hatred for the Templars into you?" Connor asked. Edwin looked away, not replying right away. "Edwin?"

"It wasn't you. They did that themselves," Edwin muttered, with bitter resentment. "Remember the Whiskey Rebellion; remember when we went to Pennsylvania to see if the new branch had been set up properly? We were in one of the larger towns and some men stirred a riot. You tried to put a stop to it. I remember you pushed me towards the buildings and told me to wait for you among the rooftops. I had a great view of what happened below," Edwin sighed. "I saw several men agitate the crowd further as you tried to calm them. Then one man, I guess he was the ringleader, pulled out a knife and stabbed you in the shoulder. You went to your knees and I thought for sure he would kill you, but you killed him and slipped into the crowd. I saw something that day on that man, a pendent around his neck; it was in the shape of a red cross."

"Edwin," Connor began, lost for words.

"I was ten and I saw a Templar try to kill my father, because my father was trying to snuff out a riot." Edwin spat, and looked at his father. "That's why I hate Templars. They kill any that stand in their way, be the goal small or large, all that don't bow to the ideology of that accursed cross are damned in their eyes!"

"Edwin, hatred is like an infection, it slowly spreads until it consumes the soul," Connor said. "In your veins, your sister's and mine, runs the blood of a Templar. Do you hate me? Zéphyrine? _Yourself_?" Connor touched the bracer his son wore.

"Of course not," Edwin protested, "you and Zéphyrine aren't Templars!"

"Yet, my father was, his blood flows in your veins," Connor pointed out.

"It's different!" Edwin protested.

"Is it?" Connor asked. Edwin opened his mouth, then closed it and looked away. "Let us get a closer look at these strangers."

* * *

"Aren't you cold, Ed?"

Edwin looked up when he heard the nickname, and he saw his sister sitting on the roof. Edwin shifted, he was sitting near the chimney, and he could feel the warmth of the fire in the house. "Not really, what do you want?"

"Mama and Papa were looking for you," she said and scooted next to him, snuggling. "Papa told Mama about the strangers."

"I know, I was with him. They're hunters, trappers actually, looking for furs. Father let them stay the night."

"Do you think they are Templars? Papa said you suspected they are," Zéphyrine said.

"Maybe… I'm not sure anymore," Edwin sighed, and glanced up at the stars. He saw one fall and made a wish, then wondered if it would come true. Probably not. "Zéff," he asked.

"Ed?"

"Assassin and Templar… where do you stand?"

"With the Assassins, of course," Zéphyrine said. Edwin frowned.

"That's not what I meant."

"Then what did you mean?"

"Where… who's right? Who's wrong? Who's good and who's evil? I… I don't know," Edwin whispered. "Grandfather was a Templar… we have Templar blood in our veins. I hate Templars."

"You write journals," Zéphyrine mused.

"So?" Edwin wrinkled his nose. "What does that have to do with it?"

"Have you ever actually done what Papa said when we ask him questions about the Revolution? Have you actually read Grandfather's journals?"

"No, it's probably all Templar propaganda," Edwin said.

"They aren't, those journals are his life, from when he was ten to the day of his death," Zéphyrine said. "Papa killed him; Ed. Papa killed his own father."

"That would explain it," Edwin muttered, glancing down at the bracer in his hand. He pressed the mechanism and the blade snapped out, snicking softly. The steel glinted in the moonlight and etched into the base was the symbol of the Assassin Brotherhood and below that a name: _Miko_.

"Explain what?" Zéphyrine asked.

"Nothing Zéff," Edwin said as he pulled out his whetstone and began to sharpen the blade methodically. Edwin arched a brow when Zéphyrine rested her head against his shoulder.

"It makes me sad," she mumbled, "that there will never be peace between Assassin and Templar. We both ultimately want peace, but our… methods of achieving it are… opposite."

"That's how the world works, Zéff," Edwin replied. "There is always two sides to everything, always a good and an evil."

"Yes, but what is the good and what is the evil?" Zéphyrine asked.

"I think if we had the answer to that question we wouldn't need to ask it," Edwin said. Zéphyrine pursed her lips together before hugging her brother.

"I love you Ed," she said. He chuckled and patted her arm.

"I love you too, Zéff."

"It's just heartbreaking, that's all," she mumbled.

"In what way?"

"The Assassins wear tragedy like a cloak, all the great assassins Papa told us about had horrible things happen to them, even Papa. Yet, the Templars dawn a cloak of bitter victory, no matter how much they win, it's always at a terrible price."

"That's the cost of victory for both sides then," Edwin replied.

"Yes, but it's sad," Zéphyrine said, snuggling closer to her brother.

"The night is long, dark and cold Zéff, and it's always darkest before the dawn, Zéff, always."

**Author's Note:**

> Assassin's Creed (c) Ubisoft 
> 
> This is my response to my feelings about the ending of Assassin's Creed 3 and Assassin's Creed: Forsaken. I wrote this to Breaking Benjamin's Dark Before Dawn album, which I just really think captures Connor's story very well… irunno. The game's ending is thoroughly depressing, and as much as I hate Ubisoft for doing it that way, the fact that I feel so strongly about the fates of Connor and Haytham means that there was excellent story telling on their parts.
> 
> The Whiskey Rebellion is a real think that happened about ten years after the Revolutionary War. I thought it would be an interesting thing to insert Templars trying to take over or something.
> 
> Edwin… oh Edwin. You do not know how much I love you. :3 If you haven't guessed it, he and Connor are very close. I also love his bond with his sister, Zéphyrine.
> 
> I'm actually planning a storying featuring these two as mains. It takes place during the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Connor's missing and Zéphyrine and Edwin go on a search for their missing father, that leads them to track down L&C. Don't know if I'll post it, but….
> 
> The reason why Haytham has two hidden blades in the story is because he has two hidden blades in the game! And I consider the game more canon than Forsaken. ^_^
> 
> My favorite part of the fic is Zéphyrine's view on Assassins and Templars.
> 
> Edwin is 16 and Zephyrine is 15.
> 
> Save an author; leave a review.
> 
> -Nemo


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